Add ‘compassion’ to the ‘thoughts and prayers’ cop-out

Whenever there is a mass shooting, sadly so common in the US, the gun lobby and its servile politicians quickly repeat the ‘thoughts and prayers’ trope to avoid having to say anything about what might be done to stop the killings. Thanks to much ridicule, I notice that they are trying to avoid saying that and find different ways to say and do nothing. We are now seeing something similar with abortion.

Abortion has become a hot potato for Republican politicians who have long been stridently calling for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade but having achieved that goal, are now struggling to find ways to respond to the draconian anti-abortion laws passed by red states that are widely seen as political liabilities.

Take the case of Kate Cox who had to travel out of Texas in order to get an abortion that her physician had said was necessary because the fetus had a serious defect that made survival highly unlikely even for a few days after birth, and also risked the life of the mother and her ability to have more children. The Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were asked about whether they agreed with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s action that forced Cox to go out of state and they ducked the question and resorted to calling for ‘compassion’.
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Judge asks Giuliani’s lawyer: Is he mentally competent?

Rudy Giuliani, lawyer and advisor to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has long been behaving erratically and provided plenty of comedic fodder to late night talk show hosts. But his recent behavior in one particular case has caused the judge overseeing it to wonder whether he was in fact losing his marbles.

The case arose from the defamation suit filed by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a mother and daughter who were poll workers in Atlanta, GA whom Giuliani had publicly accused of changing votes in favor of Joe Biden, and he also threw in the gratuitous implication that they were drug users, saying that they were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine” and that it was obvious they were “engaged in surreptitious illegal activity.” In an earlier proceeding, Giuliani conceded that the statements were false but that they were protected by the First Amendment.

But yesterday, outside the courtroom after the first day of the trial for damages, Giuliani said that he would prove that his allegations were true, which made the clearly incredulous judge ask his lawyer if Giuliani was all there, since his statements made him liable for a second defamation charge. Giuliani’s lawyer did not seem to be sure how to answer.
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Film review: The Duke (2022)

I recently watched this nice little comedy set in 1961 that stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in which Broadbent plays a working class character who keeps losing his job and getting into trouble because of his efforts to fight for those whom he sees as being unfairly treated, such as old pensioners and disabled veterans of wars, trying to get the government to waive for them the licensing fees that the owners of every television must pay the government and which goes towards funding the BBC.

This film is based on the life of a real person Kempton Bunton and the theft of a painting of the Duke of Wellington that was stolen from the National Gallery, and the trial of Bunton for stealing it. (The link has spoilers for the film.) It is a film that gets its laughs from the behavior of the characters, not from jokes, and Broadbent and Mirren, two excellent actors, have the skills to make the most of their roles.

Here’s the trailer.

One thing I was curious about was how Bunton was able to get a high-powered barrister to represent him at his trial since he clearly would not have been able to afford one. Since this theft really happened, I looked Bunton up and found a link to the lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson who had a privileged background with an elite education that led to an illustrious career and was married at the time to the already-famous actress Peggy Ashcroft.

I do not know the British legal aid system and how this came to be. Maybe because Bunton’s case gained a great deal of notoriety at the time and he became something of a folk hero, a Robin Hood type fighting the establishment, Hutchinson provided his services pro bono.

Kate Cox leaves Texas for her abortion

After the Texas supreme court lifted the hold on the law banning abortions that a judge had imposed, Cox had a difficult decision to make: wait and if the supreme court would ultimately rule in her favor or leave the state. Since the court gave no gave no time for the decision, they may well have just run out the clock. So she opted to go to another state to have her abortion.

A pregnant Texas woman who was seeking court permission for an abortion in an unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S. could not wait any longer and went to another state, her attorneys said Monday.

The announcement came as Kate Cox, whose fetus has a fatal condition, was waiting for the Texas Supreme Court to rule whether she could legally receive an abortion. Her baby’s diagnosis has low survival rates and her attorneys said continuing the pregnancy jeopardized both her health and ability to have more children.

“Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn’t wait any longer,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which was representing Cox.

This likely makes her case moot. Fortunately for Cox, she appears to have the resources to carry out her decision. This still leaves in limbo other pregnant women who need to have an abortion. Meanwhile a pregnant woman in Kentucky, another anti-abortion state, has asked a court to allow an abortion and is awaiting a result.

Vivek Ramaswamy creates a new facet of the model minority myth

As an immigrant from South Asia I am of course familiar with the model minority myth that surrounds that community, that we are high achievers in many areas (other than sports), from mathematics to science to business to spelling. But Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has created a new frontier, that we can also be world-class assholes.

Desi Lydic of The Daily Show has a nice compilation showing how Ramaswamy tries to be everything to everyone, to ingratiate himself with diverse groups of people while at the same time having a repellent personality.

I do not normally use words like ‘asshole’ but frankly, I could not find a better descriptor for him. The word ‘jerk’ simply does not do justice to how disgustingly smug, arrogant, and annoying he is. My ire may be also greater because he and I share the same ethnicity of being Tamils, although he is from India and I from Sri Lanka. I would hate for people to think that he and I are alike in other ways too, which is what ethnic stereotyping tends to do.

Susanna Gibson speaks out

Just before the elections in November, I posted about Susanna Gibson, a nurse practitioner running for a seat in the Virginia House of Representatives. She and her husband had in the past live-streamed sex acts. It was all perfectly legal but some Republican operative had obtained the video and shopped it around to media outlets and the Washington Post had published it. Then flyers with that information were mailed out by the Republican party to voters in that district. To their credit, most of the Democratic party rallied around her but in the end she lost a close race 17,878 to 16,912, a margin of just 966 or 2.8%. The fact that it was so close means that she might well have won otherwise.

Gibson has given an interview about the whole affair and about what people need to realize about the whole online experience.

I think a big underlying factor that really needs to be addressed, and our society needs to start being educated on, is there is this devaluation and misunderstanding of consent, especially when we’re talking about digital privacy. Content that is initially made in a consensual context, which is then distributed in a non-consensual context digitally, is a crime. Just because someone consented to share something in one particular context doesn’t mean that it is or should be fair game for the whole world to see.

Choosing to share content, online or in whatever medium, with select people with the understanding that it will disappear and can only be seen by those present at the time — when we’re talking live streaming, webcamming and Skype — that is a far cry from consenting for that content to be recorded and then broadly disseminated. And there is case law precedent confirming this.

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The nightmare for Kate Cox continues

The Texas supreme court has put on hold the restraining order that a lower court judge had imposed that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion, stating that her condition met the requirements for an exception to the state’s almost total ban on the procedure. The Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, a Republican anti-abortion zealot, had appealed to the supreme court for such a move. Even before the supreme. court stepped in, Paxton went even further and said that he would prosecute any doctor and hospital that allowed the procedure even if the courts rule it to be permissible. So much for the party that says that it is the upholder of law and order.
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The latest bonkers Republican debate

The debate on Wednesday debate involving the four remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination other than serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), saw most of them trying hard to claim the title of the main challenger to SSAT. This article summarized the main points.

The explosive fourth Republican presidential debate Wednesday night made plain why former President Donald Trump has so far skipped the 2024 primary debate circuit.

The four contenders onstage — former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — spent most of the two-hour debate hammering each other, overshadowing efforts to focus attention on the frontrunner in the race.

With the smallest debate field so far and with Iowa’s caucuses less than six weeks away, the candidates were better able to showcase their policy beliefs and explore major differences, but they followed the pattern of previous debates with a series of memorable personal shots.

Ramaswamy referred to Haley as “lipstick on a Dick Cheney.” Christie mocked Ramaswamy’s “smartass mouth.” DeSantis said Haley “caves every time the left comes after her.”

An AP article noted this interesting point: “By the end, moderators asked candidates which previous president inspired them. No one named Trump.” SSAT will not be pleased,

Will Saletan describes himself as a political moderate who now does not have a home because the Republican party is bonkers. He summarizes some of the evidence for this that he heard during the debate.

I’M A MODERATE. In 2018, I voted for Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Republican governor. Four years later, when Republicans nominated an election denier to replace him, I voted for the Democratic nominee, Wes Moore. Give me a sensible conservative party, and I’ll consider it. But that’s not what I’m seeing in Congress or in this year’s Republican presidential debates.
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S INSANITY leaves a big hole in this country. When progressives jerk their knees on one issue or another—deriding religious parents, overdoing COVID restrictions, calling every border-control policy racist—I’d like to hear alternative ideas from a sane conservative party. Instead, what we have is an extremist, authoritarian party in which—as Kelly essentially acknowledged—the one presidential candidate who tells the truth and adheres to principle has no chance of being nominated.

On The Daily Show, this week’s guest host Charlamagne Tha God highlighted some of the points raised, focussing on the most bonkers of the four, Vivek Ramaswamy, who endorsed a whole list of wacky conspiracy theories.

Will every abortion in Texas have to be approved by a court?

The sweeping restrictions on abortion that some states have imposed in the wake of the US Supreme Court invalidating Roe v. Wade means that some women have to go to court in order to get an abortion that should have been non-controversial. A judge in Texas yesterday issued a temporary restraining order against the state, thus permitting Kate Cox to get an abortion even though she was 20 weeks pregnant and thus exceeded the six-week limit in that state. Her baby had been diagnosed with trisomy 18, a condition under which it is not expected to live more than a few days outside the womb.

Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, filed a lawsuit this week asking the court to temporarily block the state’s abortion ban, because she has been unable to get the procedure due to concerns of violating the law. Cox’s baby was diagnosed with trisomy 18 and is not expected to live more than a few days outside the womb, according to the suit.
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Cox has been to three different emergency rooms in the last month due to severe cramping and unidentifiable fluid leaks, according to her lawsuit. Cox has had two prior cesarean surgeries – C-sections – and, the suit said, “continuing the pregnancy puts her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy.”

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Another delusional person seeks Santos’s seat

Now that George Santos has been kicked out of Congress, there is a scramble to fill his seat in the special election scheduled on February 13, 2024. Under the rules for special elections, there will not be a primary and each party can pick their nominee. The GOP is reviewing 15 candidates and one candidate, Philip Grillo, seems to be the perfect successor to Santos. Who is Grillo? I’m glad you asked.

Philip Grillo, a candidate in the special election for Santos’s vacant Long Island seat, was convicted this week of charges relating to the January 6 attack, when he entered and exited the building multiple times, at least once through a broken window.

At one point during the protest Grillo, 49, was interviewed on camera about why he was there.

“I’m here to stop the steal,” he said, according to the justice department. “It’s our fucking House!”

He then made his way further into the Capitol. He also recorded videos of himself in the Capitol. “We fucking did it, you understand? We stormed the Capitol,” Grillo said in one. “We shut it down! We did it! We shut the mother..!”

On his third entrance to the building, the justice department said, he could be seen in multiple instances pushing up against police officers and, in another recording, from his cell phone, smoking marijuana inside the building and high-fiving other rioters.

Recently, during his trial, he testified that he had “no idea” Congress convened inside the Capitol.
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At trial, his attorney’s argued that their client had “was acting under actual or believed public authority at the time of the alleged offenses” and said “he was and believed he was authorized to engage in the conduct set forth in the indictment”.

So basically Grillo is both highly ignorant and highly delusional. Given that these are the qualities that the GOP’s leader serial sex offender Donald Trump (SSAT) also embodies, what is there for the GOP not to like about him? Grillo should be a shoo-in for the nomination.